Would You Give Up Citizenship for $1 Billion?

Eduardo Saverin turned in his passport ahead of the Facebook IPO. Proof that entrepreneurs are fleeing because of high taxes?

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Eduardo Saverin

It’s a fun thought exercise for most of us. But whether or not to drop his U.S. citizenship for $1 billion was a legitimate question for Eduardo Saverin, one of Facebook’s co-founders. Depending on what happens when the IPO actually launches, Saverin could get more than $3 billion. As an American, he might have owed about a billion in capital gains tax, but he won’t owe any now because he decided to renounce his American citizenship.

Reactions have fallen into two extremes. One is exemplified by Forbes.com, where libertarian Daniel Mitchell crowed, “We now have a very high-profile tax expatriate.” Rich folks, he went on to say, are fleeing the United States at an unprecedented clip due to our onerous taxes on the wealthy. Noting that more people gave up their American citizenship in 2011 than any previous year, he argues that Saverin is merely the latest example of “taxpayers escaping countries controlled by politicians who get too greedy.”

Not so Fast

There are more than a few problems with this logic. First, if people are indeed fleeing the United States due to capital gains tax, you’d think that the highest rate of departures would be when capital gains taxes were most onerous. That time is not now: Throughout most of the 1970s, maximum long-term capital gains tax percentages were more than twice as high as they are today. OK, so capital gains taxes are low, but perhaps all these fleeing Americans are running from plain old income taxes? Same deal: Average income tax rates for those making $2 million a year or more are at the lowest or second-lowest point in 50 years.

While hard data is difficult to come by, anecdotal evidence, along with a New York Timesarticle about American expatriates, suggest that a significant number of those renouncing their citizenship have moved to Western Europe. If they think they’ll have lower taxes there compared to here…well, we just don’t need them in the gene pool.

At the other end of the spectrum are those who vilify Saverin. They feel betrayed by an entrepreneur who made millions here, but would rather unfriend the U.S. than pay his fair share of taxes. “Writing this article without profanity has been almost physically impossible,” begins post by David Gewirtz at ZDNet called “Why Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin is a schmuck.”

What should an entrepreneur owe?

It’s an interesting question, isn’t it: What exactly does an entrepreneur owe to the nation where he or she started a business? I’m not sure, but I don’t think the right answer can be citizenship for life, in which case a lot of Americans should be applying for Chinese citizenship about now. Conversely, if you owe citizenship where your company’s customers are, then a lot of Chinese ought to be on their way here.

And the question of where Saverin made his money is murky. He was born in Brazil to wealthy parents, and his first big windfall came from investing in the Brazilian stock market. As to the IPO, that’s a reflection of future expectations more than past earnings, and Facebook’s future is not primarily American. The U.S. currently accounts for less than a quarter of its total usage.

On top of all that, Saverin doesn’t even live here anymore: He’s been in Singapore for the past three years. All things considered, if I were in his place, I think I very well might make the same choice he did, rather than pay $1 billion to a country that I no longer call home.

Honestly now, wouldn’t you?

Minda Zetlin is a business technology writer and speaker, co-author of The Geek Gap, and vice president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. @MindaZetlin

There are a great deal of opinions and ideas related to language learning that are either founded on solid pedagogical theory and tested strategies and others which are clearly urban myths to the point of almost being ‘old-wives-tales’.

I myself, have undertaken research in bilingualism in adults and children and have been facilitating language learning for professionals in France, in Poland and in Russia over the past twenty years, so a lot of this post is realated in part to theory and a lot to practical experience, working with learners. I have often met people who state that they cannot learn a foreign language, which I feel is total nonsense – albeit that by simply uttering a defeatist statement, defeat usually follows, so I guess they are ultimately right.

I have never met anybody who was not capable of learning a language, although I have met many who were not willing to put in the effort and hard graft that is required to learn. Furthermore, I have never met a complete beginner in language learning, in as much as they have not one single word of vocabulary or a very simple sentence or phrase that they can rattle off.

That said, I meet on a daily basis, many people who have strong opinions or beliefs as to how a language should be learnt, and unfortunately a lot of their ideas have very little solid truths, so let’s have a look at some of the myths and misconceptions regarding language learning.

1. To Learn a Language effectively you must go to the country where it is spoken.

This is partly true and also false, especially if we look at the vast numbers of Indian, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Mexican etc. immigrants in the UK and the US or some of the English in France, who still have problems mastering the language for various reasons.

One of the reasons is the community aspect, where people live and move almost exclusively through their community in their own native language.

Satellite tv and radio, also means that the news and entertainment comes to them in their native tongue too, so there are times when it is not even necessary to acquire all but the rudiments of another language to survive.

For language learners who do not live where the language they are learning is spoken, this would be a good compliment to a language learning program as long as the conditions are right.

Student exchange programs are so often done as a job lot to enable learners on a limited budget, access to this type of program – one of the intrinsic problems here is that they usually end up living and speaking with their friends in their native tongue, embracing the foreign language and culture briefly.

There is also the problem that I have seen where learners go to the UK to learn English and spend half the day in a classroom (could they not do this in France too?) then half a day sightseeing with their friends (unfortunately speaking French). This seems a bit of a waste of time and money, especially as they are often boarding with a family that sometimes has little time to speak with them at the end of the day, or during mealtimes.

Going it alone, can be a good solution to language learning on-the-job, but it needs a certain kind of temperament to be separated from ones family and culture and be plunged into a foreign one, alone, the learner would also need to have a certain ability to get-by in the language to survive over a period of time, either working or studying.

2. Children Learn Languages Quicker than Adults

Studies have shown that children’s initial efforts pay off better than adult learners, but adult learners acquire languages more effectively over a period of time. One of the reasons for this is that children see another language as another opportunity to play and to imitate, which adults can have issues with as learners. Adults have experiences of learning and grammar patterns using memory strategies that children have not yet learnt, which helps in the recall process of language learning – some are later overtaken by children. When children play with other native children, they imitate, shout and copy their friends whilst enjoying the language interaction, whereas adults are often too self-conscious to even go all-out in role plays in a learning situation.

There have been studies in bilingualism, Lenneberg’s Critical Period Hypothesis for example, which have argued that there is a certain age when true bilingualism is no longer possible – at around the age of 14 years of age (some say younger).

Lenneberg’s theory argues that the plasticity of the brain in children up to the age of 14 years of age, allows for the rapid and effective acquisition of languages to bilingual standard, this theory has been criticised by Newport and Snow & Hoefnagel-Hoehle 1978 but all of the theories relating to natural accent and language use are difficult to compare as the research methods differ, they have been either diachronic, synchronic, or experimental.

3. Starting Young Makes For Better Language Acquisition

This can be true in authentic situations where children are using the language at the same time as they are learning, but not always the case where Children have little or no authentic usage for the language in their lives with interaction with native speakers – either friends and family or in school. It has been shown that the age that a child starts learning a language is not so important as the volume of input and stimulation they they get to use the language in authentic situations. There are many examples of, for example, an English child learning both French and English through the interaction with their mother or father in English, and in the world outside the family in French. There are also instances of families where the father is English and the mother is French and the child grows up being monolingual in French, being able to understand English but not being able to speak English fluently.

4. Language Learning is a Quick Process that can be acquired Rapidly

You must have come across the books and Audio CDs “Learn French in 20 Lessons” and other such pie-in-the-sky promises whilst browsing a bookshop. Well, believe me it’s a lot of hot air, as I’m sure you know, although it’s very hard to resist the temptation to believe it at times. Learning a language is often a hard and difficult task that takes years of effort and practice to perfect.

5. Pronunciation is not important.

Pronunciation is of utmost importance in language learning in order to be understood by native speakers.

This is why so many English speakers understand each other in a learning setting when they speak a foreign language such as French but can be floored when they realise that French native speakers can’t understand what they are trying to say.

Take, for example, the word “Souhaite” in French – to wish or to desire, a close pronunciation would be akin to the word “Sweat” in English but very far from ” Sue-Hate”, which many English speakers say.

See the blog post on Linkwords, which is a good technique to help remember pronunciation.

Problems with pronunciation occur for two main reasons; either the learner has read the word but never heard it spoken by a native speaker or the word has been spoken by a ‘teacher’ with pronunciation problems themselves – which is very common.

I have seen the word “clothes” phonetically spelt in my sons English learning book for school as “Cloth-siz” and heard most French speakers pronounce the word thus.

6. Having an Accent is Bad for Foreign Languages

As we have seen, from Lenneberg’s study, most of us will inevitably keep our own native accent, however strong or mild it remains, but never fully eradicate it when speaking a foreign language.

This is not a great problem as long as what we are saying is pronounced well and intelligible for native speakers.

An accent in a foreign language is both a part of our own identity and can be charming when speaking.

I personally hate hearing my own accent when speaking French, and I have been here for 18 years, but people tell me that it is charming and that I should keep it – grrrr.

The chances of you choosing the remaining 75% of the language to communicate is pretty slim and quite frankly, impractical.

8. Languages Can Be Learnt Through Interactive CD ROMS

This myth already has a mistake in the title – a CDROM is only as interactive as the original programmer has designed it.

A CDROM will never be interactive in the way the people are interactive, it will never surprise you after you have been through the activities once.

It cannot speak faster, louder, or as varied as a real person.

It will never speak to you as a person does, such as turning away from you to say something.

You cannot rewind a person or get them to repeat exactly what they said and how they said it as you can rewind a CDROM back to the beginning.

OK a CDROM has its uses but is a very limited aid in language learning and is only a part of the toolbox and not the whole toolbox as some companies would have us believe.

9. Grammar Rules Must Be Learnt to Learn a Language Effectively

Grammar rules can be useful to learn a language but are not essential.

Grammar terminology is a way of describing the way a language works – but it does not mean that by not knowing what the present perfect tense is, that we cannot become very able in a foreign language.

English schools abandoned teaching grammar rules in English teaching during the 1970′s, but this does not mean that English children cannot learn English.

Indeed they may have difficulties when attempting to talk about the functions of the language, in terms of knowing the labels for parts of the language – this was something that I learnt later at University.

I was unable to put a label on parts of the following sentence “I have lived in France for seventeen years”. But I had no problems writing, understanding or speaking English.

I would suggest that grammar patterns and grammar functions are more important for language learners – more, how the language is constructed and what the functions do taking precedence over knowing the terminology.

If You feel it important to know the labels, then OK, this may work for you, but difficulties arise when a learner tries to transpose the rule they have in their own language to a foreign language.

French learners who try to make a parallel between the present simple in French and the present simple in English will know what I am talking about. The function and the tense, although sharing the same label has a completely different function in terms of describing time and its usage.

10. Making Mistakes is Not OK

This is one of the biggest surprises for me to see written in black and white on websites. I can’t believe that people can even think that making mistakes is a bad thing as I consider that making mistakes is a good sign of a learning process actually happening.

I would add that making continuous systematic mistakes and not learning from them would indicate otherwise.

If we aspire to learn and speak a foreign language we will inevitably make mistakes along the way – this is a natural occurrence in learning and is, the part of the way that we learnt our own native languages at the outset.

Banning mistakes means making people aware of their weaknesses in such a way that they are not permitted to dare and experiment – take this away and learning becomes restricted almost to the point that it just does not happen.

In summary we have seen here some of the urban myths surrounding language learning – maybe you can recognise some of them and maybe you disagree, that’s fine and you can add a comment to let me know what you think – I would be interested and grateful to hear what others think.

When all is said and done, language serves a social purpose for a social animal; for humans to communicate.

A language can therefore, not be learnt effectively in isolation using whatever method or technique available, without the opportunity to use it for its pre-destined function – to communicate with other people.

Language is quite simple when we boil it down to the basics – it is made up of only four skills (I would add others but it may be just nuance): Listening, Reading, Writing, Speaking (Hearing I would add too, which is needed in order to listen and cultural skills).

In order to effectively learn a language requires an holistic approach which encompasses the 4 skills plus lots and lots of dedication – there are NO shortcuts, so don’t bother looking for them.

To fully learn a language requires an additional aspect where the learner is able to embrace and understand the culture of where the language is spoken.

Language and culture are two determining factors in understandings across languages and culture and cannot be dissimilated from the learning of language.

Winston Churchill once said of Great Britain and America, that they are, “.. Two countries separated by a language”.

But we both speak the language don’t we?The jury is still out on that one ….

Today’s Editor’s Picks

“Hello, my name is Glen and I represent Mason Shoe Company.” That was 37 years ago and I was twelve. I found an ad for shoe salesmen, completed the application and attached a letter written in pencil. In the letter I asked if I was old enough, but I don’t think they ever read it although they did send training materials, catalogues and order forms.

So I got on my bike and set out to conquer the world—a new entrepreneur. I was turned down cold at the first house. The next house was that of a widower who didn’t seem to tolerate kids and kept to himself. I stared at his house for a long time building the courage to approach. Surprisingly he smiled at my introduction and invited me in. He bought two pairs and when asked, I looked at my price list and told him the retail and my cost. He wrote me a check for the retail and told me never to tell anyone the cost.

That experience taught me that within limits, we make our own rules. All of my experiences have taught me something. So here are some thoughts I developed over the last 37 years.

Look for ways to make a difference. I saw job descriptions as the “had to do” list not as a limit. Throughout my career I created opportunities. I think that’s a big part of what entrepreneurs do. They identify opportunities and apply themselves, frequently without invitation to do so.

Follow that overwhelming desire to take action. At one point I used the regular hours of my job to teach as an adjunct professor, which lead to an appointment on the Boards of Retail Advisors at the University of Florida and Cornell University. Entrepreneurs seem to have a voracious appetite for learning and teaching. We also feed on multiple tasks or projects, which lead to increased productivity.

Exert your influence as much as possible. I resigned from one job in frustration over major differences in direction. Within two years they were bankrupt. I saw this as a failure on my part for not influencing the organization. An entrepreneur can go from the trenches to the big picture and assess cause and effect. The protagonist in this story is influence. Without it we are frustratingly adrift.

Help other would-be entrepreneurs. It was an entrepreneur that I worked for that saw something in me and gave me a helping hand. He told me I needed to go into business for myself and help struggling companies. Four months later I left and he provided a generous severance to get me started.

Someone once asked me what it was like going out on my own as an entrepreneur. I told them it was like jumping out of an airplane with all the materials needed to build a parachute. An entrepreneur must be willing to take a risk.

What are your experiences and list of critical traits and skills?

Read more:

Glen Blickenstaff is the CEO of The Iron Door company, which makes and distributes high-end, hand-forged doors and windows. The company has two brands: Monterrey Doors, available exclusively at The Home Depot, and Castle Entries, available through independent dealers. Glen is an experienced executive with a track record of turning around and managing companies in the retail, building and financial market segments. He has over 20 years of progressive leadership experience within the Fortune 500 and nine years of consulting for small to mid-sized businesses, not-for-profit organizations and governmental agencies.

Featured Response

It’s more than a decade into the new millennium, and there are still countless small businesses that don’t have an adequate presence on the Internet. And with an increasing number of potential consumers turning to the Web (fueled by review sites, like Yelp) to gain information about their surroundings, the lack of a Web page can corner the nondigital businesses of Main Street into relative obscurity. How are you supposed to be able to find the best Chinese restaurant in your neighborhood when there’s a good chance it’s not even searchable on Google?

Enter OnePager, a New York City-based startup that provides a simple drag-and-drop program to create a website that looks professionally developed. OnePager co-founder and designer Matthew Moore explains that the main goal of the team, whose members largely came from small-business families, was to provide a tool for businesses that otherwise didn’t have the resources to create and maintain a full-blown website.

“We got a lot of requests from small business owners and people who didn’t really have the budget to work with us,” Moore explains. “They wanted to have a nice website created for themselves, so we got to thinking about doing a product.”

The objective of the website can be found in its name: It provides easy, one-page websites for small businesses to fill out their hours, provide information for social media, and even invite fans to sign up for a newsletter. All of this construction is done through the company’s modular content blocks, which can be organized into single- or double-column layouts. The result is a straightforward yet customizable page-builder that offers the brass tacks of the company’s business.

“We originally chose this direction to not focus on a particular vertical, like photographers or restaurants,” Moore says. “We wanted to have the biggest market possible.”

Moore says that the company has been relatively successful since its formal launch in August of this year, with 20,000 websites created by a variety of businesses. While the site offers full customization, users are naturally drawn to the OnePager templates, which are designed by Moore and other members of the design team. Still, he says, it’s difficult to entice businesses who have been surviving without the draw of a digital footprint.

“It’s such a fragmented part of the economy, and you can do anything from Google AdWords to local advertising, so that’s a challenge to get out there and get in front of people,” Moore explains. “Small business owners are so busy and so preoccupied.”

Moore says that because the tool caters to nearly every kind of small business out there, the next phase of OnePager brings some challenges. There have been talks of expansion into menu offerings and e-commerce, but the open-ended nature of the company means that there are plenty of tailored features on the table.

“We’re trying to bridge the gap between small businesses and technology that can help them better achieve their business goals and make it affordable and easy to understand,” Moore says. “We’re just trying to keep learning what people want.”

Do you know of a business interested in helping small business? Let us know in the comments below.

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https://glsrpa.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/your-work-may-be-serious-but-your-business-doesnt-have-to-be-cbs-news/#respondTue, 20 Dec 2011 14:02:39 +0000http://glsrpa.wordpress.com/?p=101

The work you do may be very important (if nothing else, it puts food on the table) but that doesn’t mean you have to take yourself, or your business, too seriously. For most companies — whether they’re coding software or making heart valves — a healthy (and of course, appropriate) dose of levity, humor and fun is good for business. Here are four ways that a good LOL can help your ROI:

1. Humor and fun feed culture: There isn’t much that’s more important to a company than its culture. And while there are certainly successful businesses with “no nonsense” cultures, the buttoned-down, serious-as-a-heart-attack corporate environment is increasingly anachronistic. It’s less likely to attract, motivate and retain the best and brightest in many industries, it can create unnecessary, unyielding stress (a recipe for diminished productivity and burnout), and, well, it’s just no fun.

Shining example: Zappos.com. I refer to Zappos often, because among other things, I think the billion-dollar retailer is the current standard-bearer of effective corporate culture. One of the ten deeply-held core values around which that culture is built is “create fun and a little weirdness” (disclosure: my company does business with Zappos, but I was a fan long before we ever met).

2. Humor and fun nurture creativity: Creativity, in one form or another, is important in almost every business. And I can’t think of too many genuinely creative companies that don’t have a good amount of fun and humor in their DNA. In fact, I can’t think of any off the top of my head. To my mind, real, transcendent creativity can’t be born — much less thrive — in a fun vacuum.

Shining example: John St. Advertising. This small agency created the “Catvertising” parody video that has been viewed by about 1.2 million people in just the past few weeks. By having what was clearly an enormous amount of fun, John St. both showed off its creative chops and grabbed colossal, overnight exposure for its business in one funny, fell swoop.

3. Humor cuts through the corporate B.S.: Humorless, uptight companies are often paralyzed by politics, stifling hierarchies, defensiveness, fear of failure/consequences, and other dysfunction. A collective sense of humor and the cohesive culture it engenders tends to minimize such toxicity.

Shining example: Despair.com. One of my all-time favorite sources of great humor, Despair makes posters and other tsotchkes that take stabs at ubiquitous, and usually ridiculous, motivational products. The company’s original “demotivators” are, ironically, far more effective than the famous posters they parody; making someone laugh will have a more positive impact on her work day than telling her to be motivated. You might say that Despair.com has survived and grown over more than a decade by having fun making fun of companies that don’t have fun.

4. Humor and fun encourage better service: More times than not, behind every grumpy, customer-scorning employee is a grumpy, soulless company. But employees who aren’t demoralized, uninspired or otherwise “oppressed” by a humorless corporate ecosystem are free to be happy, and are likely to make others happy in turn.

Shining example: Southwest Airlines. The airline that tops many customer satisfaction lists is approaching an extraordinary 40th consecutive year of profitability, despite being a low-cost player in perhaps the most financially challenging of enterprises. Southwest’s fun, irreverent reputation and playful approach to an otherwise serious business makes customers smile, and smiling customers tend to go hand-in-hand with good results. This viral video of a Southwest flight attendant actually making passengers enjoy the pre-flight safety briefing says it all. Compare that to the typical air travel experience, and the value of the fun factor is clear.

Business isn’t all fun and games, of course. There is serious work to be done, there are endless challenges to overcome, and we certainly don’t always feel like smiling or laughing. That’s why they call it work. But if you take every opportunity to lighten up — to not take yourself or your business too seriously — you might just find yourself laughing all the way to the bank.

Click here to read some more great thoughts on humor and fun. And please share your own in the comments below.

Michael Hess is founder and CEO of Skooba Design, and also serves as an advisor to other entrepreneurs. He is “obsessed to the point of insanity” with customer service. Read the philosophies that make Michael and Skooba Design tick here.